The Chico Thursday Night Market from the Air

I've been working with Butte College on a promotional video for International students, and one thing they wanted to capture was aerial views of the Chico Thursday night farmer's market and the downtown Chico Plaza.

Taking off over the Plaza fountain

Gaining altitude

Starting to get above the city

High above downtown Chico looking south down Park Ave.

Aerial view of the market

The Plaza Fountain

Almond Orchards in the Summer

My typical almond orchard post comes in February or March and showcases the incredible winter almond bloom that can cover miles of the valley with white flowers. Once the bloom is over, the leaves emerge on the almond trees, and the orchards become drab green tunnels until the leaves unceremoniously fall off in the fall.

But I thought I'd shake things up a bit by posting some images of the orchards as they look in the heart of the summer.

The orchards themselves are fairly difficult to photograph well because the deep shade contrasts so harshly with the bright sun.

But it is possible to get some nice shots of the almonds themselves, which at this time of year are covered with green fuzz.

I will post more as the nuts mature.

Aerial Views of Sunflowers in the Sacramento Valley

My last post showed regular ground-based shots of sunflowers in the Valley. On the same trip, I also used my Phantom quadcopter with GoPro 3+ Black Edition camera to capture some aerial images of the sunflower fields.

The fisheye perspective of the GoPro makes it look like you're well above the flowers, when the reality is that the quadcopter is skimming less than three feet above the golden blooms. 

That can make for some exciting flying, but makes for even more exciting images... like some unique panoramic images like these (click on the images to enlarge).

In my next post, I'll try to put up some HD video of the sunflower fields, taken as the Phantom skimmed above the flower tops.

Sunflowers in the Sacramento Valley

It's summer, and besides heat, rice, and tomatoes in the Sacramento Valley, if you look in the right places, it can also mean sunflowers.

Though sunflowers are not a major crop in the Sacramento Valley, if you look around, you can usually find a field or two tucked away in some corner somewhere.

These images were taken in a sunflower field near Artois, in Glenn County.

My next post will include some aerial shots of the sunflower field.

Hi-Res Panorama of the Almond Bloom

Though I don't do it too often, I really enjoy making super high resolution images using Microsoft ICE to stitch images together.

My most recent hi-res image is a 48 image stitch of an almond orchard in bloom in the Sacramento Valley.

A 48 image, 300 megapixel stitched image.

The stitched image is 26,253 x 11,443 pixels, or about 300 megapixels - easily big enough to print mural size.

100% blowup of a small section of the image.

Fall Colors in Bidwell Park, Chico - Part 2

More of the amazing fall colors in Lower Bidwell Park in Chico, CA.

Hikers and runners under a canopy of gold in Bidwell Park.

Reds, pinks and yellows line a trail in Bidwell Park.

Hkers in Bidwell Park enjoy the fall colors.

A cyclist enjoying the variety of colors in the park.

Hikers enjoy the incredible colors in Bidwell Park.

Fall in Bidwell Park, Chico - Part 1

A cyclist enjoys the incredible fall colors in Lower Bidwell Park, Chico

This warm dry fall has resulted in an incredible color show in northern California, and particularly in Bidwell Park in the town of Chico. I can't say that I ever remember fall colors as bright and varied as this year.

Typically, there's some yellows and golds, but this year there is virtually every color of the spectrum this year, from bright yellow through orange and red, and even shades of purple. The mild weather has helped the colors stay longer because there haven't been any storms to blow off the leaves.

Enjoy! I'll post more next week.

Runners enjoy to fall colors in Bidwell Park.

Fall colors over Big Chico Creek in Bidwell Park.

Runners enjoy the golden colors of the forest in Bidwell Park.

A large valley oak in Lower Bidwell Park

Peaches in Bloom

As you can tell by the past few posts, the Sacramento Valley is a wonderful and colorful place to be in the spring.

Perhaps my favorite bloom of all is the peach bloom, which typically takes place about the same time as the prune bloom, a couple of weeks after the end of the almond bloom.

These photos were taken in an orchard near Marysville. Click on each image to enlarge.

Downtown Chico at Night

No one will deny at Chico is a 'cute little town.' People particularly like downtown Chico. But that doesn't necessarily make it photogenic. There are certainly parts of downtown Chico, such as the plaza, that are photogenic - I posted some photos of the downtown plaza in a previous post, "Merry Christmas Chico".

I few weeks ago, I decided to take another shot at photographing parts of downtown at night.

In some ways night photography is easier than daytime photography in a place like downtown Chico because you don't have to contend with blight sunlight and deep shadows. The lights of the buildings at night also tend to look more colorful and interesting than storefronts during the daytime.

However, night photography can also be more challenging in some ways. Buildings and blocks lacking interesting lighting can make dull subjects. But the biggest problem is often cars. Car headlights can ruin a street scene by being too light. Cars moving through the scene can leave streaks of light which can be interesting or intrusive.

Still, over a period of an hour or so on a Saturday night, I managed to capture a few representative images of Chico's downtown area. I also witnessed a car turning the wrong way on a one way street, a couple of cars completely running red lights, and large numbers of people in various states of drunkenness. Ah, Chico.

Spring is Coming!

Despite all the rain and gray weather we are having, spring is coming. I promise. And with it will come green hills and wildflowers. I'll be doing more posts in the next month or so on spring photography, but here's a taste of what you can expect to see as the weather warms and the skies clear.

You can view all of my photos tagged with 'spring' on my main website.

California Poppies north of Chico

Wildflowers and Mount Lassen, from the Vina Plains, north of Chico.

Oak tree along Leesville Road, west of Williams

Owls Clover on Table Mountain

Sutter Buttes in Spring

February - Almond Blossom Month

Mid-February is special and particularly beautiful time in the Sacramento Valley; the time when the hundreds of thousands of acres of almond trees bloom.

California produces 80% of the world's almonds, and winter wouldn't be complete without the endless sea of white flowers that appear for two weeks every year.

Here is a sample of what the orchards look like during the bloom (you can see my full set of almond orchard images on my main website):